DIGITAL INNOVATION IN THE FOREFRONT OF 3 ITALIAN CITIES

Milan comes forward, Florence keeps the pace and Bologna slows down. Despite different performance, the three Italian cities are still the “smartest” ones in the country.

These cities were able to develop and implement processes of digital change and innovation to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants, favor business, achieve objectives of economic and environmental sustainability and increase their competitiveness rate.

The ICity Rate 2015 was developed by Forum PA for Smart City Exhibition, which took place in October in Bologna. The rank considered 150 statistics parameters to measure the degree of “intelligence” of 106 district cities according to 7 criteria – economy, livability, environment, human capital, mobility, governance and, as a new introduced criterion, legality, unavoidable requirement for the right development.

Milan still keeps the top among the Italian cities, reinforcing its smart characteristics of economy, livability, human capital and still keeping a good rank on mobility, governance and environment. On the legality point of view, its performance is less impressive (ranking at 70th place), giving petty crimes, the number of authorities put under a commissioner, and the number of threatened journalists.

The city that lost a lot of ground is Rome, now ranked 21st: the capital keeps a good positioning in economy, human capital, livability and mobility. What is losing ground are governance, environment and mostly legality, now ranking at number 97.